The War in 2020 is a 1991 war-adventure novel written by Ralph Peters. Taking place in a future dystopia, the novel's plot is spread over 15 years and mostly features the United States' efforts to defend the Soviet Union against an alliance of Japan, South Africa, and the Arab Islamic Union, a confederation of militant Islamic states. The novel follows the career of U.S. Army air cavalry officer George Taylor as he leads his troopers in wars abroad and civil conflict at home. Background During the 1990s, intense trade competition gradually makes Japan a major trading power against the United States and the European Union, which gradually worked for the dissolution of NATO. The Japanese also use their position to expand the mandate of the Self-Defense Forces and even export its military technology. The U.S. military draws down its forces for most of the 1990s, starting with deployments during Operation Desert Shield and Latin American interventions, while disarming most of its nuclear arsenal, in parallel with the (fictionally perennial) Soviet Union; in addition, the drawdowns affect the military intelligence community due to what was proving to be over-dependence on automated means of intelligence gathering. The situation comes to a head in 2005 when instability in Zaire's Shaba province prompts the South African Defence Force (equipped and trained by Japan) to seize mineral-rich sections of the area. The United States sends the XVIII Airborne Corps along with associated air and naval assets to repel the aggression. Plot The U.S. military is deployed to Africa to stop a South African invasion of Zaire's Shaba province. Captain George Taylor of the U.S. Army is leading an Apache gunship squadron, patrolling over Shaba province, when advanced South African gunships destroy it. After crashing and mercy-killing his fatally wounded gunner, he finds an abandoned Army camp, and forages supplies for a long trek, initially on foot, to the Zairean capital, Kinshasa. Along the way he learns that the attack on his squadron was part of a bigger South African offensive that had targeted U.S. forces in Zaire; South African commandos and Zairean guerrillas allied with the South Africans also destroy B-2 bombers at an airbase in Kinshasa. The American collapse was so swift that the U.S. President is only able to force a cease-fire (and South African withdrawal) by carrying out a nuclear strike on Pretoria, an action that had reaped heavy international condemnation. The